Fantasy sports games have been played since the mid-twentieth century, and it is estimated that over thirty million people played fantasy sports in 2008. Fantasy sports games are based on the concept of allowing a participant to act as a team owner by allowing them to select “fantasy” players to their team, and then manage the players and the team throughout the season. “Fantasy” players consist of real life professional athletes, so a participant can build a fantasy team of real life players from various real life teams.
Often times, participants compete against other participants who are in the same “fantasy league,” with each participant's score being based on the real world performance of the players he or she has selected to their fantasy team. In fantasy sports games, participants can manage their players as if they were an actual team owner, such as by sitting a certain player out for the game, or trading a player away to another fantasy team.
There are several iterations on fantasy sports games, the most popular, however, are based on baseball, cricket, American football, football (soccer), basketball, golf, hockey, auto racing, and professional wrestling.
Traditionally, fantasy sports games scoring systems have been based on on-field player performance. For example, in fantasy football, which is based on American football, a certain amount of points are awarded to a participant if one of their fantasy players scores a touchdown, while points are deducted if one of their players commits a mistake, such as fumbling the ball.
Thus far, participants have only been allowed to select players from real life sports teams, which, which has limited the scope and entertainment value of fantasy sports games.
Also, thus far, fantasy players' performance has been based only on on-field activities, such as in-game performance, and not off-field activities, such as arrests, charitable involvement, and the like, which has also limited the scope and entertainment value of fantasy sports games.